Freedom is on the line in this lockdown

Politicians are there to take difficult decisions, by weighing up all the expert advice and choosing a policy with the least worst outcome depending on the options available. But in the current crisis over coronavirus, the damaging impact of drastic interference in our civil liberties has apparently barely been considered at all.

Since the nationwide lockdown was announced we have had no right of association, and so political parties, trade unions, businesses and every other form of organisation outside the state has been severely disrupted, if not destroyed. This has occurred with barely a whimper of protest from the political class.

Worse, it has been cheered on by most of the national media, with their shrill calls for lockdowns and punishments for people going about perfectly lawful activities. Thankfully, there are now some voices raised about particularly stupid examples of police harassment of dog owners, and the constables ignoring actual crimes while investing in drones to harass moorland walkers.

How is this a reasonable policy for a UK government to pursue? Whenever you ask this question the response is usually to crush the questioner with accusations of playing Russian Roulette with someone’s granny. The basic assumption here, so far largely unquestioned, is that we all agree that we will support doing ‘whatever it takes’ to save lives from this new disease.

Let us step back for a moment. Most human beings and societies, going back into prehistory, have lived with the threat of disease as part of their everyday lives. It is only in the richest societies after the development of antibiotics that this harsh reality has been hidden from view, for most people, most of the time.

The one good aspect of this current virus is that most humans will catch it and recover. This isn’t like the world my mum grew up in, where there were plenty of diseases that were common and likely to be a death sentence. If the virus were different in aspect, and was going to kill many more of the people who caught it, then the restrictions now placed on our civil liberties would be a reasonable and proportionate response.

But I argue that, in these circumstances, the restrictions are not only wrong in principle, but also by collapsing the economy will produce a much worse long-term outcome for society as a whole. It is the lives of young people that are being most ruined by the policy of lockdown, and as this begins to bite they will start to ask whether it was reasonable that their lives were ruined en masse so that the politicians could say we were doing ‘whatever it takes’.

There is a great deal of confusion and smoke and mirrors over the basis for the policy response. Plenty of people will die with the virus, but not from it. The poor souls with serious underlying conditions should be rightly isolated as much as possible, and that is where I believe the money should be spent. It would cost a fraction of the current projected cost of the current policy.

This crisis has also revealed the risible state of contingency planning and in-built resilience of the NHS. It seems we are ruining the future of the younger generation for the want of a warehouse full of ventilators, and some extra spare hospital capacity. So hats off to those senior civil servants sitting on the contingency-planning committees in Whitehall. Your incompetence has just been exposed. This crisis was an obvious one to plan for, and was predicted by, among other high-profile people, Bill Gates. Let us all hope you give back your knighthoods and have your gold-plated pensions halved.

I believe the politicians have now abandoned their primacy in this crisis and we are now in the hands of the bureaucrats and health academics. I listen with despair to the blinkered approach of these now all-powerful people. Academics are not at all well-suited to take political decisions, which require a dose of common sense and the balancing of different interests. How can an academic expert in viral diseases be expected to balance the competing rights of the vulnerable old person and the vulnerable wife now shut inside with her increasingly violent husband as the lockdown rolls on?

As for the term ‘key worker’, I would just mildly suggest we are all key workers in our own lives. It is of course amusing that for once a hospital cleaner is getting a benefit (school provision for children) denied to the stockbroker or estate agent, but that shouldn’t blind us to the realities and difficulties that will arise from this lockdown policy.

After two or three weeks, young people will start to organise parties, and with pubs closed illegal shebeens will fill the gap. Their irritated neighbours will phone the police and expect the lockdown to be enforced. We all know where this story ends, with serious confrontations likely to lead to major disturbances in urban areas.

Let us assume that most people, unlike me, are initially persuaded of the necessity of the lockdown policy. I understand that my view is at present seen by many as eccentric. But at what point will people get fed up and start to say, ‘We will just have to live with this disease in the population, just like we do with other diseases’? Or will the technocrats then argue that we need to keep most of the controls in place, and get more organised about how we control people, just in case of the next disease?

Our most dearly held liberties have been trashed and not with a great battle, but with barely a whimper. Freedom is on the line right now, and if people value it they will need to fight for it.

David Wild is a co-founder and chairman of Lodestone, advising on strategic communications, with over 30 years experience in business and politics.

Picture by: Getty.

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George Whale

Some common sense seems at last to be filtering through to the mainstream media:

“Hysteria has forced the UK into lockdown, crashed the economy and will kill more than coronavirus…

We are building a colossal national debt which will take our children’s and grandchildren’s lifetimes to pay off.

Mental and physical ill-health, children’s shattered life chances, suicide, murder and alcoholism will claim many more lives than Covid-19.

Patients with cancer, kidney and heart disease are already going untreated as beds go to Covid-19 victims. Yet no vaccine is likely for a year or more.

We are in lockdown over a death risk of less than one or two in a THOUSAND, most with a limited life expectancy anyway. …”

Trevor Kavanagh, The Sun, 29th Marth.

Catharine Knowles

31st March 2020 at 5:16 pm

Hooray!

NEIL DATSON

31st March 2020 at 2:20 pm

I agree with much in this article and many of the points made on the thread below. What I’ve personally found most distressing is how many of those I know and speak to are in favour of enhanced restrictions. Almost invariably their reasoning boils down to: ‘I can be trusted to be sensible but others can’t’. But that’s the whole pointed of being an independent adult, your own judgement is valid for you, it’s not valid for everybody in the country.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

31st March 2020 at 2:10 pm

Get rid of the monarchy and replace it with a federal, democratic republic with fundamental liberties and separation of powers guaranteed by a bill of rights and written constitution.

Guy Green

31st March 2020 at 4:04 pm

Oliver Cromwell tried that and ended up as King in all but name

fret slider

31st March 2020 at 4:37 pm

Er, things have changed a bit since then.

No puritans to speak of…

Ed Turnbull

31st March 2020 at 4:55 pm

@Fret Slider, no Puritans? I’ll have to disagree with you on that. Who do you think is constantly telling us to drink less, or not at all? Who’s badgering us to not smoke? Or eat sugar? Or burgers? Or drive? From whom does the litany of condemnation of behaviours of which they disapprove emanate? They may no longer wear 17h century apparel, but there’s no doubting they have the Puritan mindset.

fret slider

31st March 2020 at 5:27 pm

@ ED TURNBULL

There’s always a few weirdoes, but there is no real puritan movement.

Those telling us how we should live our lives etc are elitist health nazis who believe they know what is best for everyone else/the planet and have no regard for personal freedom and responsibility. In fact they detest it.

Do you really believe the mad rantings of a 16 year old puppet with aspergers? Why isn’t she in charge of the economy or the response to the coronavirus?

We know why.

ZENOBIA PALMYRA

31st March 2020 at 9:35 pm

Cromwell and the Puritans defeated the would-be tyrant Charles I who sought to establish a Bourbon/Habsburg-type despotism in these islands. Cromwell’s revolution did not die in 1660 but laid the foundation for the 1689 Bill of Rights and 1701 Act of Settlement which form the basis of our modern liberties, rooted in natural justice and protected by Parliament.

LIVE FREE OR DIE

Robert Welsh

1st April 2020 at 2:51 am

Doesn’t seem to be working for us here in the USA, we have the same dilemma where the Media/Political juggernaut has produced the exact situation described in this well written article.

Christopher Tyson

31st March 2020 at 1:26 pm

The lockdown has been a long time in the making. The generalised anxiety, the fear of risk, the enthronement of heath and safety, the elevation of psychiatrists, counsellors and therapists, we have been encouraged and rewarded for seeing ourselves as victims and as vulnerable. The world has been presented to us as a terrible and dangerous place, best stay locked up indoors safe and sound. I don’t want to worry anyone, but accidents happen at home too.
Our society does favour the intellect over the physical. The idea that you should be well rewarded and elevated because of your brain power is accepted, I guess that’s because the brainy people are in charge. I was just thinking that if you are a robust heathy sort, surely this is your time? Surely you should be able to go out and do what you want to do.
Entrepreneurs and brainy types, survival of the fittest, he who dares wins, if you ain’t got the brains, that’s tough on you. But when your moment comes, when the weak and frail are falling, are you free to go out and conquer? No you have to stay indoors, so that you don’t contaminate anyone. Personally I don’t think I need anymore brains than I have, but I’ve often had to deal with people who assume that I’m stupid or who assume that they are cleverer than I am, simple folk must get that all the time, I do have some empathy with them.

Catharine Knowles

31st March 2020 at 3:05 pm

I am finding the replacement of “Goodbye” with “stay safe” particularly enraging. I found that my daughters and my mother felt the same way. I haven’t decided what the best response would be: “Take a risk” sounds polite, though I don’t feel polite. One of my daughters said “Stay safe” makes her want to go and lick a tube train.

George Whale

31st March 2020 at 4:27 pm

I know what you mean. Several local shops have taken to putting these dumb slogans in their windows. And the council (I assume) has erected Big Brother style telescreens all around town with imperious messages on loop. Life in my once lively, friendly town is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Christopher Tyson

31st March 2020 at 1:08 pm

The article paraphrases TS Eliot. I was looking for an Eliot quote yesterday, when I found it I didn’t use, I realised I wasn’t sure if I quite understood it but I just want to put it out there:
“There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, … .”
As I was flicking through the book I found ‘April is the cruellest month’.
I’m not a big fan myself, although I think Macavity the mystery cat is brilliant.

Catharine Knowles

31st March 2020 at 12:53 pm

I would love to see a pressure group set up to question why this disease is being treated so differently to flu, and to fight for our freedom.

I can understand why the Chinese behaved as they did, as they were fighting an unknown disease. I can even understand why the Italians did. But, even without testing, it is now clear that Covid19 is more like flu than Ebola. Its main problem seems to be that because of its virulence its victims are clumped together in space and time, causing a headache for health services. As the government says, we have been locked down “to relieve pressure on our NHS”. Well, as far as I can make out from the figures, the main reason there is pressure on the NHS is because staff with a cough who would normally go to work are being forced to stay at home, as are staff who happen to live with someone with a cough. I have not been able to find any evidence that there are significantly more patients at the moment, and deaths so far this winter have been significantly below average. So, by all means, ramp up intensive care beds, ask people to wash their hands, and ask the old and vulnerable to be very careful; but otherwise stop all this nonsense, let the NHS staff and the rest of us go back to normal, and save this country from catastrophe. I would rather there was short term pressure on the NHS than the long-term damage to the whole population this lock-down will cause if it goes on for much longer.

I am hoping that now so many members of the government have personal experience of just how mild this disease usually is, they will be more reluctant to keep us imprisoned for much longer.

Simon Giora

31st March 2020 at 12:40 pm

“But at what point will people get fed up and start to say, ‘We will just have to live with this disease in the population, just like we do with other diseases’?”

Fair point. At least a year to a vaccine, difficult to see a lockdown of that length or a live economy at the end of it. I don’t understand how the government/science advisors will relax/remove the lockdown if there is no vaccine. How would they explain the need for the lockdown? Herd immunity would need around two thirds of the population, 40 million or so, to catch Covid-19. At current infection rates that won’t happen in next 12 months.

If the initial outbreak in this country, when only a few dozen had to be isolated and contact traced, could not be controlled how would it be possible to control numbers needed to achieve herd immunity?

Ed Turnbull

31st March 2020 at 10:56 am

A fine rational article. Expect none of the points the author makes to be mentioned in the MSM.

There are always those for whom the ends justify the means, whether those ends are preventing some old person with serious co-morbidities from dying two months earlier than they otherwise would have, or increasing social control ‘for the good of the planet’ or some other specious reason. These people scare me and a sane society would keep them as far from the leavers of power as possible. Sadly such people are those who actively seek, and attain, power. And, in a free society, it’s difficult to see what we can do to stop them, without comprising the principle of liberty for all. I guess the only non-authoritarian approach is to greatly limit what those who attain power can achieve.

My wife frequently comments that (as I’m a pretty opinionated blighter) I should go into politics. But I always remind her the idea horrifies me – I have no wish to tell others how they should live their lives, provided they respect the sanctity of persons and property, as well all should. I only ask to be left in peace to pursue my own personal bliss at no harm to anyone else. Fat chance of that these days though…

Kevin Corbett

31st March 2020 at 11:39 am

Very good article spot on (in my humble view). Medical and epidemiological ‘authority’ is now being used to dodge any difficult questions over what is being planned. Doctors deciding over life and death decisions, seemingly without traditional legal recourse for the public to challenge due to last week’s Act, which removes medical litigation; and now reports of relatives and loved ones being excluded from the death bed with reports of online access only. These are fundamental tenets of healthcare practice that are being overturned as they are being viewed as niceties to be discarded on The Battlefield because of the War On The Virus; a ‘virus’ which reportedly has relatively fewer deaths than previous flu epidemics. Every death is a tragedy so why are we suspending rights and planning Industrial Scale Field Hospitals when its not Ebola or the Hantavirus, and when our government has de-listed it as a ‘high consequence infectious disease’ with a mortality rate they have described as “low overall”? See official statement: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#definition-of-hcid

Ed Turnbull

31st March 2020 at 12:44 pm

Kevin, many thanks for the link. I was unaware that C-19 was no longer considered a HCID. And you’ll notice you don’t see this being reported on the Beeb, or any of the other mainstream (and provably untrustworthy) media outlets. There’s a narrative at play in this crisis, and nothing can be allowed to interfere with it. Hence the creation of the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (Cabinet Office rapid response unit) which aims to crack down on ‘fake news’ regarding C-19, as this publication reported yesterday.

silly billy

31st March 2020 at 10:44 am

Flying an effing drone to shame walkers – not essential. And, how, exactly, does social distancing work within a police helicopter? The country seems to have lost the plot, throwing its entire GDP at a level of winter mortality which is currently much less than the past two years on the trot. We’ll be paying the bill for decades, and what will be left to throw at Covid-20?

fret slider

31st March 2020 at 10:36 am

The academic who’appears to be leading on government policy has form.

“…was behind controversial research that triggered the mass slaughter of farm animals during the 2001 FMD epidemic, which cost the country billions of pounds.

And separately, he also predicted that up to 150,000 people could die from bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or “mad cow disease”) and its equivalent in sheep if it made the leap in humans. . To date, there have been less than 200 deaths from the human form of BSE and no deaths from sheep-to-human transmission.”

Catharine Knowles

31st March 2020 at 10:12 am

Thank you, David. I agree with every word. I am ready for the fight. This disease increasingly looks as if it is less deadly than the flu, which killed 50,000 extra people in this country two winters ago without anyone batting an eyelid.